Large volumes of modern business are conducted on the basis of billing. For the goods it sells and the services it provides, a supplier business entity bills a customer, be it a number of individual consumers or another business entity. The customer pays for the goods and services on the basis of the bill. Typically, a bill is for a certain amount owed to the supplier and is to be paid by the customer in full on or before a certain date.
It can be problematic for the supplier business entity if its customers do not pay their bills on time and in the entire amount billed, as this can negatively affect cash flow, and have other negative effects. It is known that customers are more likely to pay their bills on time and in their entirety where the bills they are paying are easy to understand and clearly reflect information the customer uses to reconcile the purchase to the payment request made therein.
Conventionally, suppliers use software to electronically generate bills and send them to their customers. These bills usually have pre-defined fixed formats and contain data (e.g., billing data) accrued from a specified source system. Such source systems include for instance a billing system or an accounts receivable system. The billing data included on a bill and the format by which the bill presents the billing data are generally somewhat uniform for a particular supplier business.
The customers however may not be satisfied with the bill they receive from the supplier business entity. Lack of satisfaction with the bill can delay the customers' response to the bill even to the point where the bill is not timely paid. Further, lack of satisfaction with the bill can result in the customers not remitting the full amount requested for payment. Customers' lack of satisfaction with the bills they receive from a supplier business entity can have a number of sources.
Reasons customers can be disaffected with a supplier's bill can be rooted in the information provided (e.g., or not provided) or the way the information is organized or presented thereon. One such reason is that a bill received by a customer may lack certain general information needed by the customer to reconcile the bill with a corresponding purchase order. Different customers may need to have certain information available on the bill to make this reconciliation effective.
For instance, a customer may need information to appear on the bill to include a supplier's tax registration number, the corresponding purchase order number, a contract number, contract effective dates, payment terms, shipping information, and other such information. However, the bill the customer receives may lack one or more of the information items. Lacking the information can make it difficult or inconvenient for the customer to make the reconciliation.
Another reason that a customer may be disaffected with a bill is that the purchased items as stated on the bill may differ from the purchased items as stated on the purchase order, in terms of item descriptions and amounts. This situation can arise for example when a supplier wants to account separately for different elements of a sale in order to bill a customer for a bundle of the goods and/or services it provided.
A third reason that a customer may be disaffected with a bill is that the bill may lack detailed supporting information regarding how the charges thereon were calculated, which the customer may desire to effectively reconcile the bill with its corresponding purchase order. For example, such information can include detailed information on usage, charges, rates, purchased items and/or services, and the like.
A fourth reason that a customer may be disaffected with a bill is that the customer may have a specific preference on the format that a bill will take when it is presented, and the bill may be in a format other than that preferred by the customer. The supplier business entity however has an interest in formatting its bills in it own format, to include unique identifying logos and other trade dress, as well as payment and marketing messages and other notices.
Business entities have conventionally addressed customer dissatisfaction with their bills by performing customizations on their bill presentment application, in order to accommodate some customers' demands. The customizations are typically designed to retrieve various billing information and to pre-define various bill presentment formats, depending on their own needs as well as the requirements of their various customers. Such customization however can pose an expensive and daunting challenge.
For instance, technical programming is utilized when a bill must be customized. Such technical programming can require a high level of expertise and focusing on a single customer's requirements to accomplish. Conventional bill customization requires the attention of a skilled programmer, whose attention must be diverted to the customization task at hand. Thus, conventional bill customization can be both expensive and resource-intensive, in terms of labor. Such costs and resource demands increase with the size of the customer base and the degree of accommodation provided to each.
Where customization is not used (e.g., or used inadequately), customers' confusion or questions regarding a bill formatted other than to the customers' preferences can also conventionally require expenses and require the investment of resources to resolve, as well as reflecting a certain rigidity, inflexibility, or inability to accommodate customers. Human intervention may be required to assist customers with reconciling their bills with their purchase orders. This can be expensive and resource-intensive to the customer, as well as to the supplier company.
First, a customer must call, write, or email the supplier company regarding the issue with the bill, such as to request validation of how a charge is calculated, to request certain information that does not appear on the bill, but which the customer needs to reconcile the bill and the corresponding purchase order, or to inquire about discrepancies between the bill and the corresponding purchase order. Then, a representative of the supplier company such as customer service or receivables/collections must individually deal with the inquiries. Concomitant customer dissatisfaction can lead to a deterioration in the good will that a company or other entity enjoys with a customer.
Thus, conventional approaches to bill presentment taken by business entities can be inadequate. Customization of bills for clients can be expensive and wasteful of resources. The expense and wastefulness increases with the size of the customer base an entity such as a business is attempting to accommodate. However, by not so customizing, a company can find themselves in the position of having to respond to customer dissatisfaction and/or confusion. Such a reactive response can also be expensive and wasteful, and can lead to further loss of good will.